Brian Elliott looking calm, confident in Calgary Flames' crease

It’s tucked in the top corner of Brian Elliott’s locker-stall at the Saddledome, a roll of white stick-tape marked neatly in black Sharpie with two simple words.

‘Calm. Swagger.’

It’s a reminder of a message from retired puck-stopping sensation Curtis Joseph, a text between the two twine-minders as Elliott led the St. Louis Blues to the third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs last spring.

“Not word for word,” Elliott said. “He’s helped me in the past, just chatting. I mean, a guy that has the fourth-most wins in the NHL as a goalie, you try to take as many tidbits from as possible.

“Whatever he texts, you kind of snapshot it and save it and when you need it, you can sometimes look back at it. Everybody has their mental and visual cues to get you going. It just one those.”

That puck has been perched in the same spot all season, there for Elliott to see every time he dons his gear.

The calm and the swagger, though, is now on display for everybody to see.

The 31-year-old has strung together victories in four straight starts, including a 27-save showing behind a sluggish squad in Saturday’s 4-2 victory over the Arizona Coyotes.

“I think swagger comes with confidence, and goaltending is all about confidence,” said Flames netminding coach Jordan Sigalet. “When you start getting a few wins, you start to believe again. You stick with the process and things start going the right way and you start getting more bounces, and you can just see the confidence in his game. Not just in the games, but in practice, too.

“And that’s where that swagger comes from. It comes from winning. His big thing over the last four wins he’s had in a row is the timely saves. He’s not letting games get to within one goal. He’s keeping that two-goal spread, which gives our team confidence, too. Those timely saves are huge. He had that breakaway save at the end of the second period (against the Coyotes). If you go into the third at 4-2, it might be a different game.

“When you’re confident and you have that swagger and things are going well, you’re a lot more calm,” Sigalet continued. “You’re not over-thinking. You’re not trying to overdo things. So he’s being more patient, letting pucks come to him, and that’s a big difference in his game.”

It’s not necessarily calm or swagger that sticks out to Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan.

It’s comfort.

“For me, I think the biggest thing is his adjustment to being on a new team, in a new city, different family life adding a young boy,” Gulutzan said of Elliott, who welcomed baby bundle-of-joy Owen Daniel in early October. “I think now, I see him settling in. That comfort is confidence, as well. He’s always put in the work and now I think he’s got everything aligned.”

Gulutzan was a bit of a broken record during Elliott’s early-season swoon, repeatedly praising his work ethic in practice as the veteran struggled to a 3-9-1 introduction, saddled with a cringe-worthy stat-line as his support staff learned a new system and eventually tightened the bolts on their leaky defensive-zone play.

His hard work, it seems, is paying off now.

“It just reaffirms what you try to preach every day, that you can work your way out of things,” said Gulutzan, who has yet to reveal his starter for Wednesday’s home date with the Colorado Avalanche (8 p.m., Sportsnet West/Sportsnet 960 The Fan). “There’s a guy who has just been meticulous about doing it and now you see the results. We always talk about (how) sometimes those results lag. You can work and work and do the right thing, and the results kind of drag in behind.

“It’s just good to see that he’s getting rewarded for the effort that he puts in day in and day out.”

In his past four crease-calls, Elliott has allowed a grand total of only eight goals-against. He owns a .918 save percentage during that span, more like the numbers the armchair analysts were expecting when he was acquired in a draft-day swap from St. Louis.

His season-long stats — a 3.01 goals-against average and .893 save percentage — are slowly improving.

If there was an official tracker for calm and swagger, he must be making gains in those categories, too.

“It’s a team game. I’m not winning games without these guys scoring goals and making plays, blocking shots, in front of me,” Elliott protested after Monday’s practice at the Saddledome. “It’s really how everybody is coming together when it counts. And when we have the opportunity to put teams away, we’re doing it. We have to do that more consistently.

“I’m just happy that you get a couple wins out there and you try to take that confidence and move to the next game right after that.”

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